probability training
by midnight.anamnesis
Summary: In which Ward examines the application of the butterfly effect and just how much the gaze beneath her butterfly lashes could change the everything he thought he once knew. / alternate ending to The End of the Beginning; oneshot!


"Why'd you do it?"

Skye's low voice carries well over the distance between them, over the table and over Ward's folded fingers trying their damnedest not to squirm. The distance is far. Maybe too far. The odds of her decreasing it in this instant, in this situation — slim. His eyes close, attempting to find some form of an answer in the darkness. It fails to work. He clenches his fingers, inhales, exhales, relaxes his grip, repeats.

"Ward," she insists, less of a plead and more of sigh. It could even be pity. Uncertainty. Disappointment. Worry. "I just..."

She sighs again, and he can feel the slight exasperation of her inarticulacy in the timbre of her breath. Skye's hand creeps toward his across the short tabletop, tugging at his tightly wound fingers, begging him to relax, to speak, to _look at her_. He contemplates the plausible effects of meeting her eyes.

"I just want to know why," she finishes in a whisper that could send shivers down his spine, tingles across his skin. The situation doesn't allow it.

Ward meets her eyes. They are brown. They're always brown.

It's that gaze again, the one that's managed to instill in him so much more empathy than he's ever thought he'd have. It's deep and grounding and overwhelmingly intense, so _Skye_ that he can feel his breath do the all-at-once thing where he's immediately forced to gasp to get enough air.

He still can't believe she can do that to him. She wasn't supposed to because the tracks led him and Coulson to a van that was supposed to hold a vandalistic anarchist with bones to pick. The probability of this, of the beautifully quixotic girl with eyes that shone like determination, Ward was sure was barely existent. And yet, she's sitting in front of him with eyes that remind him of solidarity and fingers skimming along his that make his breath hitch. He leans into the touch across the already small table.

Skye still waits for an answer, blinking her unwavering gaze only once, and she is suddenly patience more than he had ever known. She does not push for a response this time, and he wonders if she can feel his blood rushing through his fingertips, restless and unsure. Logically, he knows she can't, but her earthen eyes search his and Ward can almost hear the click of locks as she opens up his box and lets the uncertainly fall away. It should be scary how well she knows him, except it isn't.

"I couldn't stand it," he says in the aftermath of crumbled hesitance. "I couldn't stand there and listen to what he said."

Her fingers still around his knuckles, the heat of almost-contact leaving a dull buzz over his skin. Suspicion shows in the crease of her lips and Ward silently berates himself; he should know that half truths and skirted answers get him nowhere in the realm of Skye. She's leaning in closer to him, her eyes unfocused as if she's staring _through_ him, searching for the rest of the truth that should be there. He stares back, seeing how she can't find it but not knowing where it is, either.

"He's hurt so many people," Ward begins, hoping he can find his thoughts there. "And if he wasn't stopped, there's not even a percentage of doubt that he wouldn't have hurt so many more. All those lives, Skye. He could've hurt innocent people, hurt S.H.I.E.L.D, hurt our team." He trails off as Skye's eyes soften, for what reason he cannot place. Maybe it's his lack of coherency, of smoothness and resolution, or maybe it's the thought of having to lose more than what they've already lost. She has a heart for both.

"And we would have stopped him like we've done every single time before," Skye replies with utter conviction. "With his identity, he wouldn't have stood a chance against us! That's what we do, Ward — save civilian lives, agents' lives, our teammates' lives."

"I know, but." Ward hesitates. "_He could have hurt you_," his mouth breathily adds with no warning to his brain. Brown eyes widen, wait for him to take it back, but he doesn't and he doesn't look away.

His fingers rediscover hers, closing the small space between them and holding them gently, tracing across the lines of her skin just like she had done earlier. He pulls them closer — pulls her closer — until he can see the charcoal that peppers her earthen eyes. The only indication that she noticed is the lingering flicker of her gaze to their intertwined digits. When his fingers tighten around hers, it's without the hesitation they used to hold, and just maybe, Skye squeezes his hands back.

"If that happened," he continues in the same whispery tone, "Any of it, I don't think I could live with myself." Her breath is close enough to his face to be distractingly warm, laced with the scent of the mint gum she loved, sending tingles across his skin like wildfire.

"I don't think I could live without _you_," he breathes, and when Ward tilts his face forward, his lips meet hers and she leans in the rest of the way.

His eyes fall shut just before hers, and they're leaning halfway over a small, steel table, but his hand still finds the curve of her jaw right below her ear and her fingers still card through the back of his hair in a way that makes him want to _moan_.

The kiss is not anything if not a question searching for its answer, and where they move in perfect tandem, there might be something that she'll sigh into his mouth or he'll breathe into her lips as she runs her tongue along his. She's gently passionate — she's always so _real_ — and he tries to be the same, to forget to mind his training that told him not to feel, and hope all the while that Skye can tell.

The legs of her chair scrape across the floor, only background noise to the pound of blood past their ears, and his hands find her waist, neck curving up to follow her as she climbs over the small table and falls into him. Ward catches her barely as they stumble back into his chair.

Their mouths only separate to breathe greedily for air, and when the short moment is past, he kisses her again like he hasn't kissed before; it's in between the tang of her shampoo and the friction of their skin that Ward almost kind of skims the tip of his answer to her question of _why_.


End file.
